In the last episode of The Crowded Streets, Rocky went to the campaign headquarters of congressional candidate George Wilson to discover his connection to the spiritual advisor Inglehoff.
George Wilson's assistant floated across the room like a pallet of bricks pulled by a child on a tricycle. She appeared to have trouble with her right leg. It dipped and landed uneasily with each step, unlike its left side cousin, which saw no problem with normal motion. Absently I began to walk with a similar step until I realized she would be the type to get steamed thinking I was mocking the way she walked.
A gang of five staffers opposed us in the main traffic pattern. They saw the assistant coming and shoved themselves against a desk on one side and the wall on the other to get out of the way of our little procession. Among them was Wanda Marcellus. When the assistant had passed they all breathed easier and went about their business. Something hit my hand as I passed and I knew which one of the staffers had put it there. I put it in my pocket for a little light reading later.
The assistant twisted her bad leg to the right and we went around the corner, into an area less crowded and chaotic than the main office, where a woman in a veiled hat and a tasteful black velvet dress sat peacefully in a section of chairs and read a McCall's with a tiny silver purse cradled in her lap. She looked familiar to me. She gazed up from her magazine and saw me, looked twelve feet past me and smiled like she was supposed to.
A door marked 'private' loomed six feet to her right and a large mahogany desk sat directly in front of her. The desk was clear of anything other than a new black telephone and a silver plate which read: “Joyce Hobbs.” The assistant left my side and sat at the desk, and when she did a warm grin came over her face, an expression I previously would have believed unavailable to her. “Have a seat,” she replied, suddenly and wondrously civil.
I did so, in the corner of the room a few seats over from the woman in the black dress, and pulled Wanda's note out of my pocket. All it said was “George's wife is here. Be careful. She's not been well lately.” When I read it, I knew the wife was who was waiting in the outer office with me. I had seen her before, that's why she looked familiar. The smile was the same smile I had seen on her face on a distant podium during a campaign stop to my neighborhood a few weeks ago. It lost something up close.
Not been well lately. She looked well enough to me. She had faintly brown hair, a small chin that melted into her neck, and a harmless, motherly look in her eyes that was sure to appeal to the voters. She put her magazine down and tried the smile again, this time directed at a potted plant a foot to my right. Her voice was smooth and dreamy, like she was on the radio trying to convince housewives to switch laundry detergents: “You are here to see my husband. I don't believe we have met before.” She extended a black-gloved hand limply forward and I bent forward to shake it.
“Rocky Stone,” I replied. “I'm a private detective.”
I expected that news wouldn't go over well, but to my surprise it did. Her eyes finally drifted in to meet mine. She bent forward so only we could hear and grinned a knowing if not altogether wicked grin. “My husband hasn't done anything wrong, has he?” she quipped.
“Not to the best of my knowledge.”
Her head slipped back. She seemed genuinely disappointed. “Oh,” said Mrs. Wilson in an apologetic manner, as if she had been carrying on a full conversation with me and had just discovered she had been calling me by the wrong name the whole time. “I thought that's what you fellows did.” She pushed her face back in, conspiratorially. “Are you for hire?”
“I could be.”
Mrs. Wilson's eyes flipped over to the secretary, who was busy on the phone. “I would appreciate your help,” she whispered. “It would give me great peace of mind if George were to lose this election.”
The private door opened just then, and the candidate himself stepped out. He spotted me and looked genuinely pleased to see me. I shook Mrs. Wilson's confusing attitude from my mind, extended my hand and he shook it with a strong, confident grip.
Why does candidate Wilson's wife want him to lose the election? Find out in the next episode of The Adventures of Rocky Stone!
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